Good morning Madame Chairperson, Permanent Forum members and delegates. My name is Michael Paul Hill, I am Chiricahua Apache and I am here on behalf of the Apache land defenders from El Calaboz ranchería, El Polvo village (Redford) and the San Carlos Apache Communities. Although we are an Indigenous border community, with our inherent aboriginal territory along the now US/MEX border corridor, we along with numerous non-indigenous border communities within the southwestern border region of United States and northern Mexico, stand against the political and physical walls, barricades, and fencing that the United States is constructing at this very moment.

In response to this year’s theme we urge the UN PFII to bring special focus and critical attention to the colonization, militarization and industrialization of the T’nde’, Nde’, Nnee’, Dine’ traditional lands and peoples. We ask the Forum to support the peaceful but firm resistance efforts of the Lipan Apache Women land and culture defense, and the Southern Athapaskan Alliance against the increasing militarized occupations and assaults by the United States and Mexico of our lands, cultures, livelihoods, ceremonies and traditional sustenance, such as the migration patterns of the deer, elk, javelina, other big game and small game including the fowl, and many others too numerous to mention. These adverse affects of the four legged migration pattern through 18 ft. high cement and steel border walls and physical barricades deter the growth of native vegetation and herbal medicinal plants used in traditional ceremonies and the spiritual welfare of the Apache and Indigenous peoples along the US/MEX border corridor and impede the safe travel on foot, car, and other modes of Apache people back and forth across the militarized zone.

Of the 2000 mile long militarized conflict zone, over 1400 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border is the traditional territory of the Apache people. The Apache people must be given the opportunity to participate in the environmental, economic, social, and political decision-making in the region.

Due to the last two centuries of attempts to officially exterminate the Apaches of all clans and bands, Apache people today experience the highest levels of poverty, racism, sexism, gender violence, hunger, malnutrition, disease, gang violence, depression, and PTSD. They suffer extreme levels of social, economic and political displacement, dispossession, removal and diasporas while the world commodifies our ancestors on t-shirts, coffee cups, and tourist trinkets.

There are currently over 18,000 U.S. soldiers occupying our border communities—with a buildup of up to 75,000 by 2010, and an estimated 8-10,000 Mexican soldiers currently deployed in the border towns and villages positioned for crackdowns on civil society indigenous protests against the construction of a Berlin-style wall which is dissecting Yaqui, O’odham, Opata, Mayo, Cocopah communities along the border. Indigenous women are particularly targeted by violence that militarization culture imposes on the U.S.-Mexico conflict region evidenced by the 4000+ disappeared and murdered women of Juarez and other border towns.

Climate, bio-cultural diversity and livelihoods are critical areas the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is forced to address in regards to the current battle waged against the Lipan Apache Women land and culture defenders. Militarization of the border has resulted in the industrialized destruction of habitats, environments, livelihoods, bio-diversity, water sources, traditional agricultural practices, traditional food security, and traditional peace practices. To allow construction of the border wall, the U.S. recently broke all democratic principles prescribed by its own Constitution and officially “waived” over 35 laws to build the wall. These violations of state, national and international laws set in place by decades of civil and human rights movements in the United States, which provided some measure of protection to indigenous people’s rights to their environment, culture, and way of life have been revoked by the Department of Homeland Security. Current debates focused on "clearing brush to catch 'illegal aliens'!" do not consider the threat of U.S. Army cranes, bull-dozers, tractors, pavers and tanks to old-growth and requisite woodlands along the river necessary for ecological health and safety, as well as a staple for the traditional indigenous life ways. Included in the groups who cannot speak for themselves are the “habitat” peoples, the "eleven unique plant and animal communities found in the four most southern counties of Texas." These critical sectors of the Lower Rio Grande region, under threat by the border wall, are concentrated in Cameron County, home to Lipan Apache people.

We urge the UNPFII to set as an urgent initiative a special session on restoring gender to the debate and decision-making on climate change and bio-cultural diversity and livelihoods, as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security attempts to intimidate and to force the Lipan Apache Women Defenders to surrender their lands. We urgently request the UNPFII to meet us in dialogue at this forum, and ask that you consider our recommendations to take an intersectional approach to climate change that involves consideration of militarization, industrialization, gender, and environmental degradation in the U.S.-Mexico militarized zone of occupation and conflict.

Lipan Apache Women Defense (LAW-Defense) is an Indigenous Peoples' Organization. It supports local capacity building, documentation, research, and investigations related to Indigenous peoples' rights affirmed in the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ratified in 2007, and adopted by the United States on December 16, 2010.

LAW-Defense documents and advocates for the rights of the indigenous originarios, Nde', and Nakaiiye-Nde lineal clan members of Lipan Apache peoples who are the Real People: original rancheria communities along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo.

Context:Lipan Apache women of El Calaboz Rancheria took up the cultural, social, legal, political, and economic protection against armed and forced dispossession of Indigenous Peoples' lands by the U.S. D.H.S. et al.

We organized community support, empowerment and decision-making processes to protect integral and inherent Indigenous relationships to lands, sacred sites, burial grounds, and biodiversity in the face of a series of armed and forced takings of local peoples' lands, as a direct consequence of the implementation of the U.S. Secure Fence Act of 2006.

Indigenous peoples from the El Calaboz Rancheria lineal clans stood firm against the U.S. possession of traditional lands. Securing our lands, resources, livelihoods, ecologically-based economies, and way of life are at the heart of the matter for Indigenous Peoples of the Lower Rio Grande, who continue to struggle against settler and state violence stemming from colonization by Spaniards in the early 1520s, and subsequent waves of settlement, development, and privatization by Euro-American colonizers.

The United Statesand Nde' Customary PerspectivesIn U.S. law, there are significant legal fictions which assume the religious and racial superiority of Euro-American settler juridical systems above those of indigenous peoples inherent and inalienable rights to self-governance, lands and territories. The following models entail excessive aggression and armed violence, which were used to dispossess lands illegally through force and coercion against Lower Rio Grande River communities:1. Eminent Domain, 2. the Declaration of Taking, and 3. Condemnation Proceedings. Impacted Nde' and Nnee Peoples of the Texas-Mexico Border--Beyond the Doctrine of DiscoverySpecifically impacted Indigenous people, the Lipan Apache, Jumano-Apache, and Mexican-American land grant peoples whose ancestors' presence in the hemisphere pre-date European conquest.

The Lipan Apache Women Defense organizedlegal, social, cultural and political resistance to U.S. militarized violence, abuse of state power, and abuse of the Rule of Law

This work raises critical questions and organizes forums for serious debate, participation and collective decision-making about Indigenous inherent Aboriginal Title, and the State's sovereignty.To date, the U.S. border wall project has been unsuccessful in El Calaboz Rancheria, Lower Rio Grande Valley, South Texas because it has not achieved its goal: genocide and erasure of Indigenous peoples, presence, history, creativity, and resilient spirit.

By foregrounding community organization, documentation, research and education the Lipan Apache Women Defense has strengthened the Indigenous People's resolve to persist in Indigenous, U.S. and International law systems to restore democratic principles and rule.

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR EFFORT to PROTECT INDIGENOUS LAND RIGHTS ALONG THE BORDER AND BORDER WALL. (FEBRUARY 2012)

Contested Rights--"Independent Indians" between the State and U.S. Development and Expansion (Map permission: Dr. Brian DeLay, Historian, in "Independent Indians and the U.S. Mexico War", The American Historical Review.